Debt

We hear every week about the massive LIBOR interest rate fixing, or the shady practices by which banks drain money from local municipalities, or the false promises given to homeowners across the country…

Seriously, the most advanced place on Earth. Bloomberg writes: Icelanders who pelted parliament with rocks in 2009 demanding their leaders and bankers answer for the country’s economic and financial collapse are reaping…

Considering student loan debt is now a trillion-dollar industry, maybe this PayPal co-founder is on to something. Via 60 Minutes:

One of the wealthiest, best-educated American entrepreneurs, Peter Thiel, isn’t convinced college is worth the cost. With only half of recent U.S. college graduates in full-time jobs, and student loans now at $1 trillion, Thiel has come up with his own small-scale solution: pay a couple dozen of the nation’s most promising students $100,000 to walk away from college and pursue their passions. Morley Safer takes a look at Thiel’s critique of college.

12-year-old Victoria Grant explains why her homeland, Canada, and most of the world, is in debt. April 27, 2012 at the Public Banking in America Conference, Philadelphia, PA. For more information see publicbankinginstitute.org.

The New York Times reports on a new model of emergency care—debt collectors posing as medical staff:

Hospital patients waiting in an emergency room or convalescing after surgery are being confronted by an unexpected visitor: a debt collector at bedside.

This and other aggressive tactics by one of the nation’s largest collectors of medical debts, Accretive Health, were revealed on Tuesday by the Minnesota attorney general, raising concerns that such practices have become common at hospitals across the country.

To patients, the debt collectors may look indistinguishable from hospital employees, may demand they pay outstanding bills and may discourage them from seeking emergency care at all. The attorney general, Lori Swanson, also said that Accretive employees may have broken the law by not clearly identifying themselves as debt collectors…

Do tax cuts for the rich trickle down to the rest of us? And does taxing the rich hurt the economy? Is Social security a Ponzi scheme? Robert Reich, Secretary of Labor under President Bill Clinton, presents his list of seven popular-wisdom economic claims that are untrue. Feel free to debate.

Writing for the journal Reclamations, George Caffentzis wonders why there is no movement in the United States to abolish our increasingly oppressive system of institutionalized student loan debt: Debt has had a…

Via Naked Capitalism, a fascinating interview with economic anthropologist David Graeber about the history of debt over the last 5,000 years (and the oft-intertwined history of slavery): Since antiquity the worst-case scenario…

So only a crackpot would question hypocrisy? Looks like the Tea Party is projecting a bit. CNN reports: They’re hard-charging, compromise-damning members of Congress, and they’ve changed the debate in Washington over…